Restaurant Review: Cactus Café in Cumbaya, Ecuador

 

Just outside of Quito in the suburb of Cumbaya is a quaint and welcoming restaurant called the Cactus Café. We had a chance to try out the menu on recent trip there. Read on to find out about our experience and reactions.

Cactus Café offers an international menu in a casually elegant setting. A wood fire oven for pizza and open area for Friday jazz nights are just a couple of the extra touches you’ll notice. We had a chance to meet the owner, Stefano, and his wife Janine. We sat down with them to enjoy a special tasting menu. Here’s what we had.

• Beef ravioli with a mushroom cream sauce.
• Prosciutto wood fire thin crust pizza
• Grilled salmon
• Salad
• Red and white house wines
• Tiramisu
• Cheesecake
• Cappuccino

We enjoyed everything we had and found the ravioli with mushroom cream sauce to be particularly fantastic, as was the tiramisu. The atmosphere at Cactus Café is both relaxing and elegant. Apparently, others agree as the owners have started franchising it at several locations across Quito, with a second smaller satellite restaurant in Cumbaya as well.

While I would recommend this restaurant to anyone, I think it would be particularly attractive to expats and tourists looking for a relaxing break from the rigors of travel or an international move. For more information on the Cactus Café, check out the web site of this international restaurant.

Image Credit: Neeta Lind

This post was submitted to the January 20, 2010 edition of Wanderfood Wednesday.